Blog:

A few things from this week

It’s been one of those weeks where a few information design things cropped up, so I thought it was worth getting them down on paper – sort of.

Trying out my limited diagramming skills

To a lot of people, information design means diagrams, but it’s an area I rarely get involved with – and here’s why

My daughter has taken up archery recently, and as part of a programme she is, on has to memorise 16 warm up exercises: this is my 15 minute attempt at shortening the 6 pages down to a single sheet. I’d suggest giving them a try, but it does rather rely on knowing the exercises first!

A medical mystery

Although I try and avoid medication when I can, I’ve had to concede to some paracetamol this week. Since my week at the Information Design Summer School, and a morning listening to Karel Van Der Waarde talking about medicine instructions, I’ve been drawn to look at as many as I come across. So, in the instructions for my paracetamol, I discovered this odd graphic.

I assume it’s supposed to reflect some sort of scale of severity (if anyone wants to put me right, please do). If that’s the case, it seems an odd way to do so.

Why should paper and screen be so different

Although most of my work is still done on paper, I’m always interested to know how the same information could be presented on screen, in a way that would make the information work the same way for someone, whichever channel they accessed it through.

Bearing this is mind, I was surprised (or perhaps not) to find the screen and paper versions of my Scottish Power* bills to be so different – I’m sure they aren’t the only ones though. I honestly found no way of reconciling the two.

Although, despite this, I loved the little graphics they use to denote the seasons on this graph.